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What I Did When the Truth Came Out About My Relationship with an Older Man

January 12, 2015

The Stet­son man and I had been dat­ing for about a year and half when he made a fool­ish move that outed us as a cou­ple to his com­pany, while he was still mar­ried. He owns a very large com­pany and once a year, all the employ­ees come together to share ideas and cel­e­brate their suc­cesses and the very best of the best in the com­pany. The Stet­son man always looks for­ward to that time of year, with its sched­ule full of meet­ings, awards cer­e­monies, guest speak­ers, din­ners, danc­ing, and cama­raderie. And this par­tic­u­lar year, he invited me along.

It was excit­ing to see how much the Stet­son man’s employ­ees admired and respected him, which I was able to wit­ness because I went to sev­eral of the cer­e­mo­nial func­tions. I attended as the guest of a friend of mine who was around my age, which helped me blend into the crowd. These cer­e­monies were my first expe­ri­ences in see­ing the Stet­son man give pub­lic speeches. I was sur­prised at how emo­tional he was; he truly loved these peo­ple. And I quickly under­stood why he was so suc­cess­ful: his pas­sion had cre­ated prosperity.

The trip was going well, and I was learn­ing so much from this older man. Plus, I was able to stay with him in the Pres­i­den­tial Suite, while still main­tain­ing my incog­nito sta­tus. How­ever, sev­eral evenings into the con­ven­tion, things changed.

On this par­tic­u­lar evening, a famous coun­try singer was pro­vid­ing enter­tain­ment, and there would be food, drinks, and danc­ing. The Stet­son man asked me to attend this func­tion under the dis­guise of being the guest of my friend, and so I showed up at the ball­room not know­ing what to expect. Well, he strode right up to me and grabbed my hand and walked me the length of the ball­room to the dance floor, where we stayed for sev­eral songs. And although these were our first dances together, on which I would ordi­nar­ily be focus­ing, I was instead focused on the stares the Stet­son man and I were get­ting from just about every­one in the ball­room. They knew him as a hap­pily mar­ried man, and yet here was their men­tor danc­ing with a woman many years his junior. And it appeared that he did not want to let go of this young blonde. Surely they were won­der­ing about our story—and where his wife was.

Later, when I was back stand­ing with my female friend, she grabbed a beer from off of a pass­ing tray, and after she had chugged the entire bot­tle, she informed me that she was com­mit­ting pro­fes­sional sui­cide. Most women are noto­ri­ous for caus­ing drama, and this company’s female pop­u­la­tion was no excep­tion. My friend told me that she had already encoun­tered many such instances. In fact, the female employ­ees were already ques­tion­ing why she was so buddy-buddy with the head hon­cho. And now her blonde friend had been on the dance floor with their beloved mar­ried boss. I felt awful for her. It was then that I under­stood the uncom­fort­able posi­tion I had put her in, and that her rep­u­ta­tion with the com­pany would never be the same.

And, indeed, after that evening, the female mem­bers of this orga­ni­za­tion stig­ma­tized her. I ended up stay­ing hid­den away in our suite for the rest of the trip—there were too many ques­tion­ing eyes at that point to ven­ture out. The Stet­son man and I were ill-prepared to pro­vide our story to the pub­lic, but my friend ended up being inter­ro­gated by just about every per­son she knew at the con­ven­tion. Of course, hind­sight being what it is, that work trip—the dancing—was not the way to intro­duce me to his com­pany. The intro­duc­tion left a neg­a­tive impres­sion, which was made worse when, a few days later, it came out that his wife was at home mov­ing her things out of their mansion.